Take a took at your local cineplex and you’ll see for yourself that we are firmly in the age of the franchise. “What’s the point,” Hollywood executives seem to ask, “unless it’ll spawn a series?” Remakes, sequels, and nostalgia surround us, and as Disney Parks aficionados know all too well, that strategy often expands to theme parks, where “IP-free” major attractions are few and far between. Today, we wanted to take a look at an increasing thread in amusement parks: sequel coasters that trade on nostalgia to remake or reference beloved and iconic rides…
1. The Beasts
There is certainly no wooden coaster on Earth as iconic as Kings Island’s The Beast. Opened in 1979, the custom creation is genuinely one-of-a-kind. Famously, virtually none of the coaster can be seen from inside the park. Instead, The Beast sprawls across 35 forested acres, hurtling through vast stretches of woods, roaring through tunnels, and – on rite of passage night rides – rumbling through inky, starlit blackness as trees whiz past, unseen in the vast darkness. Actually, only one wooden coaster has ever come close to matching The Beast in renowned… its offspring.
We dedicated an entire in depth feature to the Lost Legend: Son of Beast, one of the most (in)famous rides to ever exist. Opened in 2000 – the height of the Coaster Wars – Son of Beast is the only wooden roller coaster that’s ever surpassed 200 feet. When it opened, it was the world’s tallest, fastest, and second-longest wooden coaster (intentionally leaving the length record to its father). But more interestingly for most, it was also the world’s only looping wooden roller coaster. Before RMC blurred the line with “kinda-sorta wooden” Topper Track, or Intamin debuted its laser-cut, steel-like pre-fabricated wooden coaster – this was a purely wood-tracked classic coaster with a single, 118 foot tall vertical loop.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for something so ambitious, Son of Beast’s installation was riddled with issues – including a part of its unimaginably complex wooden structure literally collapsing mid-construction. Forget the loop. As you’d expect of a wooden hypercoaster, Son of Beast was probably the most intense ride experience on Earth. A major structural failure famously sent a train-load of riders to the hospital, necessitating new, lighter trains (and a result, the removal of the ride’s signature loop in 2007).
Son of Beast continued without its loop for just two years. A reported rider injury in 2009 saw the ride decommissioned. Kings Island reported for years that it was evaluating options for the massive wooden monstrosity looming over the park. Would it reopened? Retracked? “RMC’ed”? In 2012, they made their decision, turning the $35 million Son of Beast into the world’s most expensive collection of scrap wood. The B&M inverted coaster Banshee was built in (a portion of) the space in 2014. (A prominent grave and eternal flame in its Moorish graveyard queue is marked as the resting place of Son of Beast.)
Son of Beast lived and died in less than a decade. Its father, meanwhile, is approaching its fifth decade of operation without slowing down… and indeed, it’s still the longest wooden roller coaster on Earth, proving once and for all that the sequel is never quite as good as the original. And that’s not the only Kings Island “sequel.”
2. The Bats
In 1981, Kings Island served as the testing grounds for an entirely new coaster concept: The Bat, a first-of-its-kind suspended coaster. Developed by then-dominant coaster manufacturer Arrow, the suspended coaster did the unthinkable by positioning guests in “buckets” hanging from overhead track. Even better, articulating arms allowed the suspended coaster to swing freely around turns, swaying through serpentine maneuvers as it raced along a snaking courses.
However, The Bat quickly encountered some problems. It turned out that Arrow had underestimated the extent to which the ride’s physical track should be banked, meaning that the swinging cars exerted unexpected forces – and substantial wear-and-tear – on the track. The Bat operated for only two seasons, then stood without operating for two more. In 1985, the ride was officially demolished. (Its station, designed to look like a belfry tower, was re-used for an Arrow multi-looper called Vortex, which lasted from 1987 to 2019.)
Despite the rough start, the Arrow suspended coaster actually went on to be a beloved ride model, with ten increasingly-iconic installations. Kings Island was home to first suspended coaster built, as well as the last. In 1993 – a dozen years after The Bat – Arrow returned to the park (then owned by Paramount) with TOP GUN: The Jet Coaster. Making use of the park’s hilly terrain, the ride departed from an aircraft-carrier-stylized station, diving and twisting through the Ohio woods.
In 2007, the Paramount Parks were sold to Cedar Fair, who swiftly removed Paramount’s movie references. Despite the fact that there was really no reason the ride had to be “aviation” themed, Cedar Fair chose the hilariously bad, generic name “Flight Deck.” Thankfully, that name lasted only five years. In 2013, the ride was cleverly renamed The Bat in an ode to the original that once resided just a few steps away. The only difference is that this one works – and hopefully, will be around for a very long time.
3. The Dragsters
There are only so many genuinely iconic roller coasters on Earth. So it’s fitting that the most astounding and captivating “sequel coaster” since the Beast’s is the follow-up to another renowned coaster icon and Modern Marvel: Top Thrill Dragster. There’s not a coaster enthusiast alive who couldn’t identify Dragster by its silhouette alone. The world’s first “stratacoaster” (meaning a complete circuit coaster with a drop over 400 feet), Top Thrill Dragster is the living embodiment of the ’90s “Coaster Wars” – temperamental, ultra-extreme, and intended to prove just how radically intense coasters could be.
Manufactured by Intamin and opened at Cedar Point in 2003 (just three years after the same manufacturer and park broke the 300-foot height record with Millennium Force), Top Thrill Dragster used Intamin’s then-new “Accelerator” ride model and its hydraulic launch technology to propel rides from 0 to 120 miles per hour in just four seconds. The (relatively) instantaneous acceleration may have been a breathtaking experience, but it was also a technologically fraught one.
The system that made the acceleration possible basically attached a cable to the train, then used a highly complex system of pressurized hydraulic fluid to rapidly unspool the cable, creating a high-heat, high-friction launch that – on more than one occasion – led to shredded cables and injured rides. The CEO who greenlit the ride (and served as a leading general in the Coaster Wars) famously called the ride his biggest mistake ever, wishing aloud that he’d never pushed the envelope so far. Ironically, though, the ride’s pesky hydraulic launch system wasn’t its ultimate downfall. Instead, in 2021, a piece of the ride’s train came detached during the ride and struck a waiting guests, leaving Dragster closed for years.
After much waiting and wondering, Cedar Point officially announced their plans for the standing-but-not-operating ride – a complete redesign by way of a different manufacturer altogether, Zamperla. Top Thrill 2 would introduce a modified ride experience, swapping Intamin’s hydraulic system for a much safer and more reliable LSM system – a non-contact, electromagnetic launch – plus, of course, new rolling stock.
Unfortunately, the LSM system wouldn’t be capable of recreating a hydraulic system’s all-at-once acceleration, meaning that the new Dragster would include a multi-pass launch – forward at 75 mph, backwards to 100 and up a new 420-foot tall vertical rear spike, and then a final, third pass that would accelerate the train to the 120 miles per hour needed to make it over the 420-foot tall top hat. At news that the adrenaline-packed thrill of an instantaneous, 0 to 120 mph, 4 second acceleration would be gone, fans practically set fire to the whole ride.
But when Top Thrill 2 opened in 2024, the reborn ride received universal critical acclaim. Well, for the one week it operated. Issues were quickly identified with Zamperla’s new trains, and given Cedar Point’s experience, they took no chances. Top Thrill 2 closed six days after it opened and spent the entirety of 2024 standing but not operating. As of this article’s publication (January 2025), Cedar Point maintains that the ride will be ready to re-open in summer 2025, and this time, for good. At this moment, the park almost certainly wishes they’d just demolished the thing. But assuming it reopens, all signs point toward Top Thrill 2 being one of the most successful sequel coasters ever… its first year excepting.
4. The Nemeses
Six Flags Great America near Chicago debuted Batman: The Ride in 1992, introducing the world to the ride that would change the industry. After all, Batman: The Ride eclipsed the suspended coaster and served as the first-ever inverted coaster (with riders hanging beneath the tracks in ski-lift style seats, capable of tearing through complex, high-intensity layouts filled with inversions). Almost certainly the launch point of the “Coaster Wars” of the ’90s, the B&M inverted coaster became a must-have feature of thrill parks around the globe.
Clearly among the most legendary was the Modern Marvel: Nemesis – a product of the cutting edge coaster model with the mind of Alton Towers’ ride designer John Wardley. The anchor of a new themed zone at the English theme park, Nemesis is a ride wrapped in lore – of an ancient alien creature whose emergence formed the Forbidden Valley – a war zone of militaristic governance, fungal blooms, and blood red rivers. Nemesis tears through subterranean tunnels and rocky chasms as it spirals around the exoskeleton of a sci-fi arachnoid-crustacean creature, with all of the track concealed beneath the treeline of the park.
Ultra-intense and totally custom, the ride is an icon that spawned its own legends. Over time, the Forbidden Valley gained more and more world-building, establishing the shadowy government organization The Phalanx as the military operatives trying to slow the creature’s spread. That inspired a drop ride / walkthrough called “Nemesis: Sub-Terra,” as well as a viral marketing campaign around the ride’s 2022 decommissioning so that – like other beloved, aging B&Ms – it could be re-built from scratch. (Its 2024 reopening as Nemesis Reborn included new black track and a new form for the titular creature, embodied now by a giant, articulating eye surrounded in teeth attached to the exoskeleton.)
In any case, Nemesis also inspired a sequel coaster of sorts. Fellow Merlin park Thorpe Park is far less fussy than Alton Towers when it comes to storytelling and more focused on bare steel coaster thrills. Still, in 2003 it added its own B&M inverted coaster called Nemesis Inferno that axes the subterranean setting for a tropical one.
Other than the name, the ride doesn’t have much in common with the original Nemesis. (The “Inferno” in its name refers to a volcanic structure built around its station and a brief trip through the fiery interior at the ride’s start.) Nemesis Inferno is also a “custom” ride (in the sense that it’s not one of 12 identical clones of Batman: The Ride) but it is a fairly standard inverted coaster aside from its little volcanic foray pre-lift-hill. Still, it’s interesting to see the ride as an expansion of the Nemesis lore.